


Handle with Care

by Huntington_Smythe



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Apathetic yogs, Apathy, Body Horror, Death, Descent into Madness, Eldritch, Eldritch Abomination, Insanity, Instant Regret, Lovecraftian, Mental Breakdown, Mental Disintegration, Other, Reality Bending, Reality Break, Self-Harm, Short & Sweet, Suicide Attempt, The Author Regrets Nothing, resignation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 19:25:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7770100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntington_Smythe/pseuds/Huntington_Smythe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day the yogs were happy. One day. And then the package came.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Mistake

**Author's Note:**

> I don't entirely know why I decided to write this. A strange mood came over me, I suppose. Also, it isn't smut for a change.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kim opens a parcel onstream. Little does she know she is making the biggest mistake of her life.

DAY 0: 

The day had started so well.

Recordings, reactions, laughs, another productive day at Yogtowers.

Until that package had arrived. 

Kim had resolved to open said package on a livestream after reaching a minor donation goal. 

How could she know that she was one stubborn bit of tape away from a mistake so vast, so infinitely horrible, that words do not exist to quantify it? 

As she took the hideous book from within, ignoring the dust that had trailed it like clutching ghostly fingers, one person watching the stream saw the book for what it was. 

But no matter how much they screamed into the chat, no matter how much they begged Kim to put the book down, they were kicked for spamming and so 1,256 members of the Kimmunity watched as Kim opened this ancient and hideous tome. 

Chat stopped completely as they watched the gibbering, deformed, _impossible_ monstrosities force their way out of the ancient seals along the spine of the book, unthinkable creatures pouring from the very ink of the pages. 

These creatures, twisted and yet shapeless, drove the viewers quite mad. These were things man was not meant to see, these were things that could not be defined or described by mankind’s limited perception of the universe.

Kim had been locked in place, staring into the very centre of the book as this outpouring of horror from beyond the stars was vomited from the blasphemous icons of this book, written in the early years of mankind, when animals and people alike were sacrificed to appease the whims of nameless gods. 

Only now could the scream wrench itself forth from numbed lips as these abominations against all mankind knows swarmed outward.

Only, now it was too late.


	2. Knock knock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are going bad at yogtowers. And the rest of the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something is asking Fiona to let it in. That something might be Zoey. Might be.

DAY 3:

Fiona huddled in a corner far away from the door, listening to Zoey’s voice begging for help.

Zoey had been calling out to her for two days.

Sobbing, cradling her head in her hands, she listens to the love of her life pound on that fire door, the tone of pleading desperation sending a knife through Fiona’s very being.

Fiona would open that door in a heartbeat.

If it was Zoey.

Fiona had seen Zoey be overtaken by the juddering, skittering horrors two days previously.

Fiona had seen what they had done.

 

Seeing the shadow of one of the skittering impossibilities was enough.

Fiona, near madness with the constant calling anyway, marched over to the door and wrenched it open.

Imagine her surprise when she found the hallway empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After 3 days of hallucinating the love of her life pleading and screaming to be let into the room with her, Fiona would have been prepared to open it regardless.


	3. Breakdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whoever is left find themselves gathered into a crowded common room as abominations beyond understanding screech and pound at the door.

‘DAY’ 18:

The sun has long since stopped rising.

The wind has stopped blowing.

Reality is beginning to break down.

Indescribable monstrosities stalk the halls of Yogtowers and gibber through the streets of Bristol.

In the common room of Yogtowers, the survivors huddle.

Just yesterday everybody had forgotten who Hannah was.

There is no leadership, no plan for survival.

Everybody in that locked room is waiting for the door to break down.

The reasoning being that maybe, just maybe, when the door breaks down, they will have a release from this cold numbness that has swallowed their hearts.


	4. Disintegration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The survivors are locked in a mortal struggle for their very sanity. Few can overcome the challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the bright side, Fiona did find Zoey.

‘DAY’ 31:

Fiona has found Zoey.

Locked in the common room with Fiona, Simon is desperately humouring Fiona as she talks to the torn plush doll.

Simon is holding back a dry and hopeless sob as he watches Fiona soothe this tear-stained plushie.

Simon doesn’t think Fiona realises she is weeping.

It was possible that Zoey was still alive

But if God had any mercy, she was not.

The rest of the survivors do not look at them, too wrapped up in their own battles for their minds.

Some have quite clearly started losing, and even the victors bear scars of this battle.

Duncan stares blankly at the wall. He has been like this since first hearing Kim whisper to them through the vents. Nobody asks if he is ignoring it, or if he has been driven catatonic.

Sjin closes his fist over a hot bulb. Just to feel something. Anything. Just to stop thinking about what lies in wait outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Find Zoey' in a non-conventional way, but she thinks she's found her. The real zoey doesn't have enough left to be found.


	5. Desperation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The survivors find themselves resorting to the most desperate of measures to survive.

‘DAY’ 40:

The survivors eat, and try not to look anyone in the eye.

Fiona, Lewis, Sjin, Simon, Sips, Tom, Smiffy, and Rythian sit in a rough circle in the centre of the room.

It had been five weeks, and they had been out of food and desperate.

They do not look at what they are eating.

They do not look at the vent.

They do not look at what is now burning black on the crude fire they have built for this.

They do not look at what now propped up in the corner.

Fiona is still silently weeping. She doesn’t seem to notice.

Simon tries to cheer himself up by counting all of the water bottles left.

There is no toilet. The smell is overpowering.

Lewis is not eating. Lewis will not eat as the others do.

Lewis has singlehandedly gone through every bottle of gin, cider, beer and whiskey available in the common room in a desperate attempt to avoid acknowledging the enormity of the horrors outside the room.

Simon thinks he is trying not to see the horrors inside this room.

These people might be all that is left of mankind.


	6. Loss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It isn't easy, having the rules changed so radically under your feet. Some are less quick to adapt than others.

‘D4Y’ 45:

The Thing in the Vents has taken Simon.

Simon had stood up and gone to pick up what they had left propped up in the corner by the vent.

Nobody had been watching him.

Without so much as a whimper, he was gone.

They stay far away from the side of the room with the vent now.

And now, as their food rots in front of them, they eye each other warily, but with a certain amount of apathy.

Except for Sjin.

Sjin stares at each of them in turn with blank eyes utterly devoid of any semblance of emotion or thought. His hand is still clutching the bulb, although it has long since burned out.

Sjin does not speak to them.

None of them speak much now, not anymore.

They’ve started to forget how, in this crowded common room, as eldritch horrors gibber outside the door.


	7. Temptation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The survivors are tempted with one of their own, as reality is torn asunder outside their office.

!Day’ 45:

Simon stands by the vent and beckons to the huddled survivors.

Kim can still be heard whispering profane truths and deep secrets about each survivor in turn.

Lewis was glad to see Simon at first, and was about to try and ask him what it was like outside.

And then he looked up and saw Simon’s face.

It wasn’t there.

Simon stood there, arm outstretched, offering an open palm with a blank oval of flesh where his face was supposed to be.

When the others noticed, there was not the cacophony of screams, or even terrified questioning.

Just a long, near-collective groan of pain and loss and resignation.

Lewis looks at his pile of empty bottles and asks himself why this had happened.

The Voice in the Vents tells him.

Lewis shudders, and waits for the end.


	8. Snapping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tension reached breaking point for one survivor. And as eldritch beings from beyond the stars scream their approval from beyond the door, the survivor acted.

%S!Y’ 5^:

Today the Thing Pretending to be Simon had Simon’s face.

Some days it did this. Others it just left the head blank.

It stood there for days on end, holding out an arm perfectly still.

Smiffy sat impassive, staring at the body in front of him.

If he could still speak, he would beg for forgiveness for what he had just done.

Instead, he stares, and weeps silently.

He wishes he knew why he’d done that.

The stained plushy is clutched in limp, bloodied fingers.

Tom gives a blank stare of what would have been reproach, before dragging the body over to the fire and grabbing a stick and the  bloodied, broken remains of the model of Frostmourne, a reminder of happier times.

As he cuts meat up in crude chunks, he does not see Rythian stand up.

 He does not see him walk over to The Thing Pretending to be Simon.

And with little more than a dry sob and a groan in a cracked and disused voice, take his hand.


	9. Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The eternal night has ended. Now the survivors must contend with even simple daylight being twisted, and made loathsome mockery of.

'̸̠͊ͤ͌̀͜Ď̙̹̿ͥą̘͇͓̻͐͒ͭ̋͐̓y̩̖͈̝͕̯ͫ̇̅̿ͩ̾͗̔͟͠'̪͎̗̰̠̼͇̋ ͖̪͎̲̺̟͈ͮͬ͝5̠ͦͦ̂ͥ̄̑̑̆̈́͘9̴̵̄͐̎҉͉̼͚̫̬̬̭̺:

There are few of them left.

Lewis is huddling by his pile of bottles and cans, pretending they are a wall between him and the world.

Smiffy stares at his hands, and then to the body, and back again. He has been like this for days. He will not eat.

Tom holds his hand out over the fire to check he can feel anything at all. None of them feel anything much anymore, besides a deep resignation to the inevitable and an empty, cold dullness starting just above their hearts and hollowing them out from there.

Sjin stares blankly at the ceiling lights. Only the slightest movement of his chest is an indication he is still alive. He hasn’t blinked in hours.

Sips mutters to himself in a language only he understands to people only he can see. None of them had noticed this slipping until it was too late.

All of them hear the bounding, skittering calls of the unnameable ones beyond the door.

All of them can see, quite clearly, Kim, Rythian and Simon standing shoulder to shoulder, arms outstretched in an appeal to come over and end this hell.

They would be more convincing if they had their faces.

Every now and then, what passed for the sky outside would break apart for nearly 12 hours a day and come through the window, flooding the room with sickly, pale orange light. As this diseased light touched them and threw shadows across the room at strange and impossible angles, it produced no warmth, no comfort.

Just simple agony.

This mockery of sunlight froze them in place for hours on end as they watched the Trio of Pretenders beckon to them, faces screwed up in pain.

When they could bear it no longer, they switched to watch the growth on the walls which had been The Thing they had propped up in the corner by the vent.

Instead of rotting and falling apart as it should have been doing over all these days, it had spread onto the wall with the vent.

As a result, the wall was covered in glistening, rotten flesh and it only kept growing.

It was growing into the vent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, the binge writing session ended there. Not sure if I'm ever going to bother updating this, but if people honestly enjoy it then maybe. It's difficult to get in the right frame of mind to write these, is all.

**Author's Note:**

> Things can only go downhill from here.


End file.
